Volunteer
Buffalo Pest Management Board Wins Award(Beyond
Pesticides, February 16, 2006) David Hahn-Baker never
planned to learn all about rats. But when he joined eight colleagues
on the Buffalo, N.Y. Pest Management Board, founded in 1990, rat biology
was part of the learning curve. Rats in people’s trash cans, beetles
chewing the leaves off Buffalo’s elm trees, grubs in the golf
courses—these problems became the Board’s concerns. For
their can-do attitude in helping to solve these and similar problems,
the board, most of them volunteers, has been awarded the “Excellence
in IPM Award” by the New York State Integrated Pest Management
(IPM) Program.

“A rat’s
job is not to be seen,” Mr. Hahn-Baker explains. “They don’t
want to live more than a hundred feet or so from where their food is.”
Prevent their access to food and shelter, he says, and they will move
on. Hahn-Baker chairs the board. “You know you’ve succeeded
when your neighbors complain that they have rats," he jokes. But
an entire neighborhood can manage rats he says, by using sensible IPM
preventive measures—including heavy duty, tightly lidded rubber
garbage cans that rats can’t chew through.

The City of Buffalo
distributed about 150,000 of these cans—called totes—to
businesses and households beginning in 1997. “They really work,
forcing rats to seek alternate food sources—to the chagrin of
Buffalo’s first ring suburbs,” says Phil Nasca, deputy director
of Building Operations for the City of Buffalo and a former member of
the Pest Management Board. Using totes properly is key, Mr. Nasca says.
They should never be overloaded and their heavy lid must be closed completely.
Nasca notes that cleaning up birdseed and dog doo is also critical to
rat control—“it’s high protein, and rats can live
off it.” The Town of Tonawanda has received estimates ranging
from $1.2 to $2.3 million to provide residents with totes.

Mr. Nasca leads
IPM efforts in the buildings under his care. “The nice part about
having learned IPM is that I can identify and correct structural deficiencies
that allow vermin entry to our facilities,” he says. “This
means I can correct a situation in a least-toxic manner before it turns
into something bigger.”

Buffalo also maintains
863 miles of streets and their 66,000 trees. One of the first big problems
the Pest Management Board tackled was spraying for beetles on the elm
trees. “The year the city quit spraying, the beetle populations
crashed,” Mr. Hahn-Baker says. “Apparently the pesticides
had been killing the predatory insects that naturally keep the beetles
in check.”

Next the group
took on grubs. One year, the turf on the city’s golf courses suddenly
turned brown and died. “It looked terrible,” says Hahn-Baker.
“They wanted to put down pesticide. So we got scores of volunteers
out there, and we all learned how to scout for grubs.” Scouting,
a classic IPM practice, compares the problem with scientific thresholds
to tell if or when to treat. The volunteers found that by the time the
damage became visible, the grubs had already gone. “That treatment
would have been wasted,” Mr. Hahn-Baker explains.

Soon after, Buffalo
residents Common Council voted in a pesticide phase-out. The 1998 law
permits low-risk sprays, but only when there is no alternative. Buffalo
was the nation’s second city to adopt such a law. New York City
is the most recent municipality to vote in a pesticide phase-out. Now
the Pest Management Board is working to become a committee of Buffalo’s
Environmental Management Committee. “We want to do more with less,”
Hahn-Baker says.

Don Rutz, director
of the New York State IPM Program, will present the award on February
23 at Buffalo’s City Hall. “This is a proactive, hands-on
group,” says Mr. Rutz. “They're a great model for how communities
can approach controversial issues around pesticides.”

The New York State
IPM Program is a partnership between New York State and Cornell University.
Find out more about IPM at www.nysipm.cornell.edu.